


the kids have bloomed from babies

by hockeydyke



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fatherhood, Fluff and Humor, Future Fic, Kid Fic, M/M, Marriage, Wholesome family bonding, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 08:10:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11505246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hockeydyke/pseuds/hockeydyke
Summary: Bitty accidentally teaches his and Jack's son a new word. Oops.





	the kids have bloomed from babies

**Author's Note:**

> To clear up any confusion: Jack and Bitty have two children (Matthew, 4 years old, and Anna, 10 months). Bitty is Papa and Jack is Daddy.
> 
> Title from The Gambler by fun, which is very much a future zimbits song.

“Oops. Papa, I spilled.” Matthew, elbows deep in pie crust at the counter, leaned over to look at the flour he’d just clumsily dumped onto the floor. Bitty shook his head, but his usual smile, frequent enough that it had started to leave laughter lines on his face at age thirty, didn’t leave his face. Messes were to be expected. He sure knew he’d made plenty when his mother was first teaching him how to bake.

“Uh oh, honey. Can you help Papa clean this up?” 

“Yeah!” Matthew, with all the coordination and common sense of an average four-year-old, hopped off his stool and stepped right into the pile of flour that he’d just spilled onto the floor.

Bitty followed, sticking his hands under Matthew’s arms to lift him up and out of the pile, and making a mental note to brush flour off Matthew’s socks before he let him traipse all over the carpets elsewhere in the house. He set his son back down a few feet away from the spill. “This is a big mess, right?” 

“Yes!” Matthew nodded several times. “Bad news bears.” 

Bitty laughed. Matthew had a tendency to pick up phrases from him, so it was pretty easy to get him to say the cutest things possible. “That’s right, sweetie. I’m going to get the broom and we’ll clean this up.”

He ducked into the walk-in pantry, leaving Matthew to pad around the kitchen making flour footprints. While standing in there he took a moment to take out his phone and check the time. Just after 5-- meaning that he and Matthew had about half an hour before Jack and Anna would be back from infant storytime at the library. That was just enough time for them to get their pie into the oven and finish dinner, which meant that they were shockingly on schedule for a family with two very young children. 

Bitty stepped back out of the pantry, broom and dustpan in hand. “Alright, sugar, you’re going to help me sweep this into the dustpan, and then we can get back to our pie. Can you--” 

Bitty cut off mid-sentence as he slipped and fell flat on his ass on the kitchen floor. While he’d been in the pantry, it seemed that Matthew had taken matters in his own hands and dumped water on the floor to clean the mess. 

As his bare feet hit the puddle and flew out from under him he threw out his hands, but really, in the end, barely had a moment to brace himself for impact, and impulsively let out a “Fuck!” 

He shut his mouth as soon as he realized what he’d said. Oops.

Matthew stood in front of him, awestruck. They stared at each other for a moment, then:

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Matthew yelled, then ran forward, seeing Bitty’s open lap as an invitation to crawl on top of him. 

Bitty, torn between laughing and utter despair, hid his face in the shoulder of Matthew’s jersey (this week it was a tiny version of Grandpa Bob’s Habs sweater, and Bitty had been trying for days to get him to skip wearing it for a few hours so he could give it a wash). Dear lord, he wanted to get a video of this so badly. Shitty would get a kick out of it. 

Then again, that would only encourage Matthew to say it more. He absolutely took after his Papa when it came to being in front of a camera, and if he knew that swearing was going to get him attention, he would absolutely exploit it to no end. That would definitely be a problem when Matthew started preschool in the fall. 

“Nonono, sweetpea, that’s a bad word. We don’t say that, okay?” 

Matthew considered this, and Bitty gave him a few seconds to process it. Then he opened his mouth and Bitty braced himself for another barrage of cussing. 

Instead, Matthew said, “Like blyad?”

Bitty raised his brows. “Like what?”

“Blyad! Blyad! Blyad! Bad words!” Matthew clapped his hands together with each word.

Matthew primarily spoke French with Jack, and while Bitty still was nowhere near fluent, he certainly understood enough at this point to know that Matthew wasn’t speaking Quebecois. He had a feeling he knew the culprit, but he asked anyway.

“Who taught you that word?”

Sure enough, Matthew answered, “Uncle Tater!”  
“Uh-huh.” Bitty lifted Matthew up off his lap and stood, brushing flour off of his legs and the seat of his shorts. He was definitely going to have to have a talk with Tater. “And if Uncle Tater said that that’s a bad word, then we shouldn’t say it, right?”

Matthew nodded, but he was quickly starting to pout, face falling into a big frown that Bitty knew very well. Matthew may be adopted, but he definitely took after Jack when it came to mannerisms. When he was unhappy he made sure that everyone else knew it, so it was time to sweep in with a distraction. 

“Clean up song, sunshine!” Bitty said, handing him the broom and getting the dustpan ready. “We need to hurry up so we can finish our pie!” 

Matthew continued to frown for a few more minutes as Bitty sang the clean up song, but by the time he (well, mostly Bitty) had tidied up the flour and gotten around to sticking the pie in the oven, he was back to normal and giggling again. Bitty turned music back on so Matthew could dance around the kitchen-- for now, at least, he had inherited Bitty’s love of dancing. 

That’s where Jack found them a few minutes later, coming in the front door with Anna in his arms, babbling baby nonsense at him while he spoke to her quietly. He toed out of his shoes (try as he might, Bitty couldn’t get him to get into the habit of actually unlacing them and slipping them off) and carried Anna into the kitchen. 

“Hi,” said Jack, as Anna waved his arms in his face and shouted “bah!”

“Hi, Daddy!” Matthew ran to Jack and wrapped his arms around his leg, placing both of his small feet onto Jack’s much larger one and screaming with laughter when Jack lifted him into the air as he took another step. In a well-practiced routine, Bitty took Anna from Jack’s arms and showered her with kisses before setting her up in her high chair in the dining room while Jack asked Matthew about how baking was going. 

When Matthew ran out of things to babble to Jack about, Bitty cut in, saying, “Matthew also learned a new word today.”

“Oh, he did?” Jack asked, tilting his head and questioning Bitty with his eyes. 

The suspense clearly didn’t sit well with Matthew, since he turned back to Jack and said, once again, “Fuck!” 

Jack bit his lip and looked back at Bitty, somewhat sheepish. “Oh.” Then he crouched down to Matthew’s level and ruffled his hair. “Hey, bud. I thought we agreed not to tell Papa that we learned that word?”

“I didn’t tell him!” Matthew said, offended that Jack would suggest such a thing.

Bitty, meanwhile, had already put his hands on his hips and raised an eyebrow at Jack. “Are you saying that he’d already learned that word?” 

Jack gave him a weak smile. “Maybe?” 

“Jack Laurent Zimmermann, are you--” 

“Bittle-Zimmermann,” Jack interjected.

Bitty sighed, good-naturedly, and tried again. “Jack Laurent Bittle-Zimmermann, are you teaching our son how to swear?”

“It was an accident!” Jack said, standing back up again and dropping his hand to Matthew’s shoulder to steer him in the direction of the dining room as before striding over to Bitty and placing his arms at his husband’s waist. “I’m sorry. I’ll do better at censoring myself. And reminding the other guys to watch their language, too.”

As usual, it didn’t take much from Jack to melt Bitty’s resolve. “I know, honey. And I’m completely guilty of it too.”

“I guess we’re even, then,” Jack said, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that Matthew had retreated to the other room before dipping down for a long open-mouthed kiss. 

After a minute, Bitty pulled just enough away to catch his breath, shaking his head. “We’re bad dads, Jack. We’re just awful,” Bitty mumbled against Jack’s mouth, then yelped when Jack nipped at his lips. 

“Nah. We love them and they love us. I think we’re doing just fine.” 

Well. Bitty had to agree with that.

**Author's Note:**

> Things that I googled while writing this: “what do babies do” “things you can do with babies” “when can babies eat pie” “baby storytime providence public library”
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at @hockeydyke or at my main blog @egaliteoulamort.
> 
> Please take a few seconds to leave a comment. It means a lot to me! 
> 
> And finally: I am currently working on another writing project, so stay tuned for an upcoming longer fic about the adventures of the infamous Samwell Women's Hockey team, which will hit your ao3 feed in a few weeks!


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